Davis to be tried out of county
HOULTON, Maine — A trial scheduled to start next week of a man accused of killing two Oakfield residents in 2013 has been postponed and will have to be moved out of Aroostook County.
While more than 100 potential jurors from across The County were called to Houlton Superior Court on Thursday, Justice E. Allen Hunter granted a change of venue for the trial after it became apparent that a jury could not be seated.
Late Thursday afternoon, Hunter indicated that of 109 potential jurors who had reported for duty, 89 had been challenged for cause. That left just 20 jurors for the pool, which he considered untenable.
“It is clear that we can’t proceed in Aroostook County,” he said.
The trial against Matthew Davis had been scheduled to start here on Tuesday, Sept. 6, and was expected to last up to three weeks. Seventy-one people were listed as potential witnesses.
Davis’ attorneys, Daniel Lilley and Amber Tucker, previously had sought to move the trial out of Aroostook County, arguing that extensive pretrial publicity about the case would make it difficult to find an impartial jury of 12 with two alternates in a region with a total population of fewer than 70,000.
Hunter denied that motion on Aug. 11 but said a change of trial location could be “revisited” if there was trouble finding a jury to seat.
On Thursday, potential jurors were asked to fill out a 15-page questionnaire, asking them such questions as whether they had a close friend or family member who was a victim of violence, or if they knew the victims. The prosecutor and defense attorneys then were allowed to challenge any of the potential jurors if there was sufficient reason to believe the individual could not be fair or unbiased.
After determining that a jury could not be seated in Aroostook, Hunter said a new date and location for the trial would need to be set. It was not clear Thursday when or where that might be.
Matthew Davis
Davis, 35, is accused of killing Michael Kitchen, 51, and Heidi Pratt, 49, on Monday, Sept. 23, 2013, and then setting their home on fire. The prosecuting attorneys are Assistant Attorney General Leanne Zainea and Donald Macomber.
Davis was present in the courtroom Thursday, looking strikingly different from when he was arrested in 2013 when he was thin and bald. Davis now has close-cropped hair and a goatee and has gained close to 40 pounds.
Neighbors of the victims heard five or six gunshots at about 4:30 a.m. on Sept. 23, 2013, and then saw a lone male driver leaving the scene of the burning home in a pickup truck, according to an affidavit filed by Maine State Police Detective Elmer Farren.
The bodies of Kitchen and Pratt were found in a bedroom after firefighters were called to put out the fire.
An autopsy conducted at the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta determined that Kitchen died from multiple gunshot wounds and Pratt from a gunshot wound to the neck. The wounds were inflicted by a semi-automatic rifle purchased by Davis, according to the affidavit. Davis never reported the gun stolen and it was found lying across Kitchen’s body in the burned remnants of the home, according to the court document.
Firefighters also found another truck belonging to Katahdin Forest Products on fire at the home when they arrived. Police believe Davis’ spree of mayhem started earlier that morning at the forest products facility in Oakfield, where a flatbed wrecker truck registered to Davis had been backed into the building, and both that truck and office had caught fire. Police said video surveillance from that site shows the same white company truck that was found burning at the Kitchen home leaving the scene.
The truck Davis allegedly drove from the Kitchen home was found burning later that Monday morning on Richardson Road in the neighboring town of Island Falls. Another firearm found inside that vehicle belonged to Davis, according to the affidavit.
Police eventually tracked down Davis and arrested him at about 10:45 a.m. that Monday in another stolen vehicle on Beaver Dam Point Road in Island Falls, according to the affidavit.
